Cakeaholics Anonymous

Last week I had an experience that completely blew me away. Never in my life had I thought that I would see the day that the sight of cakes and pastries would nauseate me. And this wasn’t a single-day phenomena – it went on for the entire week. It was more than troubling – I was in near-panic mode.

Everyone that knows me reasonably well is aware of my fondness for things that contain sugar and more so if those ‘things’ include chocolate. But no … the smell of chocolate was enough to make me gag. I wanted to get as far away from the three layered Devils Food cake with chocolate ganache icing, chocolate pastries with raspberry cream filling, chocolate cupcakes iced with rich buttercream frosting (alright you can stop drooling now) as a turkey would from Thanksgiving.

You may, dear reader, ask as to what was the cause of this strange phenomenon. Or you may not ask. I am however, going to tell you anyway. I was in a Techniques of Baking class all day, all week and I have NEVER been exposed to SO MUCH butter, sugar, chocolate, icing, cakes etc. in my entire life. The smell of baked goods that would on a regular day make my knees weak had quite the opposite reaction (uh .. not meaning that they made my knees strong).

In spite of my loss of appetite for desserts, it was all in all a fantastic (but intense) class. I have to confess that I'm not used to menial labor in the kitchen. I am on the other hand, used to having a cook who follows instructions very well. In other words I’m lazy but I supervise well. This class was tough for me because I had to do everything myself. Everything that one needs to do to bake a cake well. And we were baking on an average 5-6 cakes per day. Baking the cakes was the easy part. It was the layering, preparing the different fillings and icings and finally decorating them that was painful. Painful but rewarding. The ‘painful’ part will of course go away once I’m back in Bangalore and my cook is trained. And all I will be left with is the ‘reward’.

Our class was made up of 14 women and 2 men and we had to work in groups of two. My partner was a woman from the Philippines who makes an annual trip to New York and enrolls herself in baking classes. She was a nice lady, very ‘propah’, at 9 am every morning she looked like she had just walked into class from a beauty salon – not a hair out of place, perfect make-up, designer clothes - quite the Philippino desperate housewife! I'd like to add here that she was a little bossy too in a quiet way but by day two she realized that she had met her match.

We had our very own younger ‘desi’ version of Mrs. Philippines who flew in non-stop from New Delhi the same morning, showered and showed up for class. Looking way fresher than me for sure! Now you have to keep in mind that I’m not used to waking up before 10 am. And here I was, had to be at the train station at an unearthly 8:30 am. I was so stressed that I lay awake all night, tossing and turning, looking at the time and tossing some more. So compared to Miss New Delhi, I was a holy mess!

My personal favorite was M – the class clown, always more interested in what other’s were doing, taking frequent breaks, great sense of humor, prettiest girl in class (I’m NOT sending her this blog – all she needs is a bigger head!), knew everyone by the end of day one, charmed the chef – wait a second – except for the ‘prettiest girl’ part, did I just describe myself? We were just like two peas in a pod and got along famously too!

And just for the record, I made a Pound Cake, Blueberry Crumb Cake, Devils Food Cake, Chocolate Chiffon Cake, Angel Food Cake, Coconut Raspberry Cake, several kinds of Pastries, a Swill Roll, Raspberry Tarts, four different varieties of Cupcakes, with/without filling, with/without icing etc. etc.

Each recipe is being sold for $10 (which is a bargain if you ask me, considering how much I paid for the class) – I’ve been out of a job for a while now so I’m sure you can understand my need to make some extra cash.

Please email me for details on where to send your cash/cheque/check/money order.